


Ulaz

by Coshledak, raisingmybanner



Series: get myself back home [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 13:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10900284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coshledak/pseuds/Coshledak, https://archiveofourown.org/users/raisingmybanner/pseuds/raisingmybanner
Summary: Shiro meets the detective responsible for freeing him from Haggar's grip.And Keith meets him, too.





	Ulaz

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place in the "get myself back home" universe. It was sort of hard to figure out where to start off this universe, but this one seemed like a good place to kick things off. And it was co-written by Aff and I!
> 
> In this universe, Shiro and Keith are brothers, with Keith being Shiro's younger foster brother. There's no space travel or Voltron, just a sort of slice-of-life setting. Shiro was kidnapped by the mob/loan sharks because of his parents, which put him in direct contact with Haggar, who surgically removed his arm and gave him his prosthetic (which doesn't have quite the same Galra tech as the canon!Shiro, though it is capable of feats!). Eventually he was found and returned to his family.
> 
> These drabbles all take place at different points, mostly backstory, to an RP that Aff and I are currently doing.

For Shiro, the method by which he was released from Haggar’s grip hadn’t seemed that important. Amidst the panic, the sheer terror, somehow it just hadn’t seemed relevant. All that mattered was that he was safe. He was—is—safe and back in the care of his family. 

Seven months after he’s saved, when the media is still crackling with the electricity of his multiple court cases, another large case breaks. An undercover cop busts up the crime syndicate that took Shiro, amongst numerous other heinous crimes. But with Shiro’s case juxtaposed over top of this case, it certainly gives an estimation of how horrendous they are.

But no one really knows the truth. 

No one knows that it was Haggar, who has no real connection to that syndicate, who amputated his arm. Sure, the syndicate sent it to Keith to light a fire under his parents for paying their dues, but the prosthetic was Haggar’s idea. They asked for a body part—a finger or an ear would have sufficed—but she took an arm.

And no one knows the truth. No one except Shiro.

And Ulaz, the undercover cop who tipped off the police about Shiro’s location.

—

The first time he meets Ulaz, the man shows up at his door and Shiro doesn’t answer it.

His father does, and Shiro sits on the couch. The couch has been moved since he came home. It used to sit with its back to the set of two windows that seeps light in through the living room on sunny days like this. With the bushes outside, the sun never quite managed to reach the television pressed against the wall that leads into the kitchen.

But now, its back is to one of the solid walls, putting the double window on the wall to the left. There’s another set of windows across from the couch, but it’s partially obscured by the television, which has also been moved. Shiro isn’t watching television, though, he’s listening.

“My God,” his father says, sounding awed and humbled. The rest happens in quiet murmurs, at last until he hears his father saying, “Thank you. _Thank you_ for what you did for our son.”

“It’s part of the job,” the voice answers, somewhat deep but not unsettling. “I’m only sorry that I couldn’t get him home to you sooner.”

“You got him _home,_ ” he hears his father say. “That’s the best outcome we could have asked for.”

Shiro stays quiet, but feels a pressure in his chest. He looks at his prosthetic hand and flexes the fingers, hearing the faint mechanical push-and-release. It always sounds too loud to him. He thinks of the quiet sounds of those claw-grab machines in arcades when he hears it, but amplified through a speaker with the volume jammed too high.

“Would you like to meet him?”

“I would,” the stranger says.

Shiro feels a tension in his nerves, the ones in his back are laced with some compulsion to look relaxed where he’s not relaxed. The ones in his legs are ready to run. His arms—his arm, the organic one—burns and he flexes both of his hands this time as his dad steps into the room.

“Shiro?” His dad calls quietly, as if he’s afraid of scaring him. It’s not a misplaced fear. “There’s a detective here who would like to meet you. Are you feeling up to it?”

Questions like this used to give him security when he was younger, like when he was sick. His mother would be sitting next to him in bed and touching his forehead and cheeks, checking for a fever, and asking if he was “feeling up to” eating or going to school. Now, the question just makes the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and raise with self-conscious disdain.

“Sure,” he says, fighting that feeling. A split-second later he realizes that his impulsiveness, his eager defiance to his brain, has potentially thrown him headfirst into being alone with a stranger. The realization is sobering, and he clasps his hands together between his knees in front of him. “Could you stay in here?”

“Of course, son.”

Shiro stands up and moves so that he isn’t between the couch and the coffee table. It’s strategic, and gives him relatively easy access to the kitchen without putting his back to any windows. He shouldn’t need to run from a cop, but his brain doesn’t care. To his brain, everyone is a threat.

It doesn’t help that the man who steps in doesn’t look like a cop. His face has faint scars and his hair is cut into a mohawk that lays back along his otherwise shaved scalp. His hair is gray, from the mohawk to the thick eyebrows, but somehow he doesn’t seem old. His face had been set into a stern line when he walked in but, when his eyes land on Shiro, he watches them soften. All of him seems to soften, and Shiro doesn’t know what that means or what to do it.

“I’m Detective Ulaz,” he explains and offers his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you…Shiro, is it?”

Shiro tries not to eye his hand, tries not to be suspicious and overly cautious. He’s sure he fails, but he reaches out to take it. Ulaz doesn’t seem to flinch at shaking hands with a prosthetic, but Shiro can’t take as much comfort in it as he knows he should.

“Yeah. It’s nice to meet you, Detective.”

“You can call me Ulaz, if you like.” When Shiro doesn’t respond, he continues. “Shiro is a nickname, right?”

Before he can answers, his dad speaks up. “His friends have called him that for years, but recently he’s starting asking everyone to.”

Shiro wishes he hadn’t, but he knows that his dad tends to divulge too much information when he’s nervous. He doesn’t like empty spaces and fills them.

“I see,” Ulaz says, and Shiro notices he’s smiling faintly at his father. The smile stays when he looks at Shiro again. “Shiro, I’m sorry to bother you with a visit after all you’ve been through. I’ve only recently finished with my assignment, and you’ve been on my mind for quite a while. I’m the one who called into the police about your whereabouts.”

Some part of him knew. There was really only one conclusion to draw based on the conversational snippets he’d heard. However, the words still take the air from him. It’s not a blow, but as if wind comes in a sweeps through his lungs somehow, stealing the breath away. A flurry of things go through his mind, but there’s only one concrete thought:

“When did you know I was there?”

This makes Ulaz shift, suddenly uncomfortable, and the smile drifts from his face. Shiro doesn’t feel any satisfaction for it, because it wasn’t his goal to make Ulan feel bad. In fact, he’s not sure why he should feel bad.

“Well, that’s part of the reason I came here, actually. You may want to sit down.”

Shiro doesn’t sit, and Ulaz explains that he couldn’t tell the police as early as he wanted to. He explains his roll as an undercover cop and that he was responsible for taking down the whole syndicate. To have reported it right away—immediately after his visit—could have compromised his position within the group. It would have seemed suspicious for the place to suddenly be compromised only a day or two after he checked in.

He remains standing, but it doesn’t feel like him. He’s somewhere else, detached from that person standing there who looks alarmingly like him. 

“A month…?” The words don’t feel like they’re formed by his mouth. They seem to just come into existence in the air, but they exist in his voice. “Two?”

“I discovered your whereabouts early in April,” he explains, his voice slow. Shiro can’t tell if Ulaz is mapping it out in his mind or mapping it out for him. “I wasn’t able to report it until the middle June because of some…issues.”

Shiro can’t find words, but the gears turn slowly in his mind. The conclusion is already there, but he doesn’t want to lay his hands on it.

“I’m sorry, Shiro. If I had reported sooner…” Ulaz shakes his head, trailing the words off as if he realizes that they don’t need to be said. Or, perhaps, he realizes that saying them would only cause the moment expand beyond anyone’s ability to control it.

Shiro hates that the first sensation he feels is the clenching of his hands. He hates that he hears that mechanical motion passing through his arm again. He isn’t usually a man to _hate_ anything, but right here, in this moment, he hates this.

_This isn’t me,_ he tells himself, closing his eyes. He grits his teeth to fight it back, that part of him that he never confronted. There are parts of him that he wanted to leave behind in that dark room of that house.

“…If you had reported sooner,” he starts, cautiously. His eyes flicker in front of him, reading some invisible teleprompter, before he moves them to Ulaz’s face. “Then you might not have been able to take down the rest of the operation. Other people could have been put through what I was or worse.”

There’s a look in his eyes, something like hesitation, and then something like relief. Shiro hadn’t noticed the way his shoulders were burdened by something until this moment, when that burden seems to finally be lifted. In a way, that makes Shiro feel better.

“Thank you,” Ulaz says, and chances a smile. “That’s a brave thing to say.”

Lifting his prosthetic, Shiro looks at it, feeling himself go out of focus enough that he has to force himself back into his body again. His eyebrows knit. “I’ll learn to live with my arm, but I don’t know if I could live with knowing those people were still in operation just to save me.” He closes his eyes for a moment, trying to steady himself, before looking at Ulaz again. “You made the right call.”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Ulaz agrees. But then it’s his turn to get a disconcerted expression. “I only wish we were able to catch the woman who did that to you.”

—

Keith hears murmurs from the living room below, but he doesn’t realize one of the voices is unfamiliar for far too long. His pre-calc homework is engrossing enough that it’s several minutes before his ears actually consciously pick up the tones of a voice several shades deeper than his father’s. 

He gets off the bed, frowning, and heads for his bedroom door. From the hallway, he can hear the voices more clearly, but only a few words here and there.

“I’m sorry, Shiro…” says the unfamiliar voice.

Keith’s eyebrows come together and he starts walking for the stairs. The apology doesn’t sound like the stock sympathy calls Shiro’s been getting since his return. It sounds like a genuine apology for something, but what? He has the irrational sense that the man ran into Shiro’s car somehow, before remembering that his parents had sold that soon after Shiro disappeared. But it has the same caution, weight, shame to it.

Shiro is saying something now — Keith could hear the soft edge of his voice from anywhere in the house — but he’s too far away to pick up exact words. He walks quietly down the stairs, not necessarily wanting to sneak up on them, but not wanting to draw attention either.

A man with a grey mohawk is standing in their living room, Shiro in front of him. Shiro has that look on his face like he’s not quite there. Not quite present in the room. That look, more than the stranger in the room and the weird apology still echoing in his brain, launches him forward. 

The stranger is saying something else, but Keith isn’t paying attention to him anymore. His eyes are on Shiro; he takes a few quick steps until he’s at his brother’s side.

“Keith,” his father says, both as a quiet greeting and a slight introduction to the man in front of him.

“Your brother,” the man says, a strange look of sympathy crossing his face as he looks from Shiro to Keith. “Of course. My name is Detective Ulaz.”

He extends a hand, but Keith doesn’t look at it until Shiro’s eyes move to him. Slower than usual, but clearing. He doesn’t look scared or worried or haunted — any more than usual, anyway. Keith has a feeling Shiro would want him to be polite, so he turns to the man and takes his hand. His grip is firm, but not overpowering.

“Detective?” he asks, looking between the man and his father, asking the silent question.

“Detective Ulaz is the one who tipped off the police, so they could find Shiro,” his father says.

Keith can’t control his facial expressions on a good day, so he’s sure the surprise is written all over his face, but he frowns quickly.

“Then why were you apologizing?” he asks.

He sees his father shift in the corner of his eye, but he’s still looking at Ulaz, trying to read the strange expressions running across the man’s face. 

“Because I couldn’t call as soon as I knew,” he said. “I was undercover and I couldn’t—“

“How long did you know and not say anything?” Keith is surprised by the harshness in his own voice, but Ulaz doesn’t back away from it. He’s clearly come braced for anger; that answers his question even before the detective opens his mouth.

“Keith, the detective just explained—“ his father starts.

“It’s alright,” Ulaz says, and Henry falls quiet.

Suddenly, Keith can feel his breath, can feel the beating of his heart.

“When I saw Shiro, he looked relatively safe and unharmed,” Ulaz says, and something white-hot explodes in Keith. Hotter than the self-pitying rage that had fueled him in many similar situations. This man had seen his brother before — _before_ — and had said _nothing_. What did he care about any operation when Shiro was standing behind him, his left hand unconsciously fingering the lukewarm metal permanently fused to his right?

He actually doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he feels Ulaz’s hand on his forearm, stopping the trajectory of his fist easily. He jolts back into the present and hears the last sound of something his father had been saying, but he doesn’t know what it was. It’s been a while since he’s totally lost control like this, and the sharp emptiness that follows the rush leaves him shaky. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

“I think I’d better go,” Ulaz says, his voice quiet.

Keith slams his arm to his side when Ulaz releases it, like something he can’t trust anymore. He tries to breathe through the emotions. Tries to do what Beth had been telling him to do in every session since the beginning. It helps a little, but there are a lot of emotions there. He doesn’t want to face them all.

He simultaneously feels justified in his anger, and angry with himself for losing control like that. In front of Shiro. Who’s spent enough time worrying about him; he doesn’t need to give him anything else to worry about right now.

Henry and Shiro tell Ulaz goodbye, and the man starts walking for the door. His father puts a hand on Shiro’s shoulder, and Shiro’s head leans toward him a little.

Keith turns to the door and walks after Ulaz.

“Keith,” Shiro says behind him, his voice not judgmental or angry or anything, just Shiro. The way it always was when he was angry at himself and just wanted everyone else to be angry at him too.

“It’s okay,” Keith says, glancing back at him for a second before following Ulaz to the door.

He stays a few steps away, and keeps his hands at his sides. Ulaz doesn’t look wary as he turns back to look at him, but Keith is growing more and more aware of the seriousness of what he just did. Attempted assault of an officer. The detective could press charges. He could. Keith has a feeling that he won’t, but he doesn’t want to press his luck. He’s never had a great relationship with it.

“Thank you,” he says, forcing himself to look into the man’s eyes. “For saving him.”

“It’s my job,” the detective says, hand on the doorknob. “I’m sorry I couldn’t sooner.”

Keith nods. An acknowledgement of the detective’s desire. Not forgiveness. Not yet. 

“I’m sorry,” he says after a moment. “Sometimes, I—“ He cuts himself off. There aren’t words to explain that don’t sound like an excuse.

“I’ve had worse,” Ulaz says, and there’s something that’s almost a fatherly smile on his face before it disappears.

Keith nods again, and the detective slips through the front door as if he’d never been there.

—

There have been a lot of things he’s had to build his family towards, and some things he hasn’t told them yet. It’s strange, because he’s never been absent from anything for a year. The influx of information and the stark awareness of the things he needs to divulge always jam up the gears in his mind. He forgets, and sometimes he forgets things he’s not sure he knew in the first place. 

Some information was easy to understand upon his return: His parents sold his car. His room was untouched to the point of dust, at least on most of the surfaces. His family had gone to his old apartment to collect his things and stacked the boxes in his room. The only ones unpacked were the clothes, and they were washed and hung up or folded in the dresser before it fell into some static shrine to the void he left. They missed him. They were scared.

Some information was less easy to understand or, at least, took him longer to process: Keith had started getting into fights at school again. He was flagging in all of his classes. His parents had been inattentive in a way that no one’s told him about directly, but he picked up on in the cracks. The faint disarray in the laundry room his mother usually kept so neat. The fact that all of the food in the house was recently purchased when he was released from the hospital, as if the kitchen had been empty up until the day he came back. His brain snagged on details the way skin snags on rough wood.

He remembers having a talk with his parents about it when Keith had gone to school. He buried himself behind his concern for Keith because, in a way, being his brother is the only role he can remember filling. He loves his parents, he never once blamed them or got angry at them while he was trapped in that dark, endless place. But, somehow, he can’t remember how to be a son. He can’t remember how to be a lot of things.

In therapy, Dr. Quinn suggested that it’s because being a son is such a passive role, but being a brother is an active one. It has purpose, as opposed to a static label that his existence fills. That purpose gives him something to do, something to focus on, and it had been something he subconsciously latched onto in that room. How do you latch on to being a son? He knows his parents need him, but only to exist. To be there, alive, and whole. 

Keith needs more. He’s always needed more, and Shiro’s been happy to give it to him.

He knows there are things he needs to tell him, things that he’s only brought up with tentative alarm in therapy sessions, or with the police, or the lawyers. But his brain falls on a need-to-know basis, and it’s hard to tell it otherwise.

Giving a tired smile to his father, he steps out from under his hand after the faint squeeze on his shoulder. It sends a pleasant warmth through him, which makes his back feel a little straighter. “I just need to talk to him.”

“I figured,” his dad says. He sighs, “It’s been a while since he’s done that. Just wish he hadn’t done it to a _cop._ ”

“He didn’t mean to,” Shiro says, but doesn’t stay to extrapolate. He heads into the small foyer just outside the living room. The door closed about a minute ago, but Keith hasn’t moved. “You alright?”

He times the words and the rest of his hand on Keith’s shoulder so that it’ll startle him the least. Well, if he isn’t hyperaware of his surroundings from the punch he threw, anyway.

“I’m fine.” And Shiro sees his words on a tight rope with no safety net. They’re on the path of a wobbly recovery, but haven’t quite slipped off.

He squeezes his shoulder. “Thanks for coming downstairs.”

“And almost assaulting an officer?” There’s a bite in the words, but Keith’s trying to sink his teeth into himself. Shiro wonders, for a fleeting moment, if he’s mad that his fist didn’t connect with Ulaz’s face, or if he’s mad that he tried.

He wraps his arm, the organic one, around his shoulder and pulls Keith back against him. There’s enough distance and it’s enough of a tug that Keith _almost_ slips, but not quite. Still, Shiro feels the weight bump against his chest, giving the illusion that he’s the reason he’s on his feet. Keith instinctively grabbed at his arm.

“What was that for?” The red in his words from before seems gone, fazed to something more disgruntled and confused.

“Thanks for _caring,_ ” Shiro corrects. Keith stills under the weight of his arm. “You get _angry_ because you care. That’s different from blind rage and hating the world for no reason. Remember?”

He thinks of three days of coming home after classes rather than going to his dorm. He remembers texting Keith between classes, figuring out strategies and mechanisms. He remembers figuring out ways to keep calm when everything inside of Keith was ready to rage and paint the world in red. Three days suspension for fighting with an older boy; three days to figure out how to keep it from happening again.

“Yeah, but…” He can hear the conflict in Keith’s voice. He thinks he feels the flicker of his fingers tightening on his forearm. “This past year—since you—“ He stops, gives up, and tries again but quieter. “I haven’t been that _good_ about remembering.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Shiro dismisses, easily. “What matters is that you remember _now_ and start keeping it in your head again.”

Nothing. Just quiet.

Then, he feels the rise of Keith’s shoulders under his arm as he takes a breath. When Keith’s hand falls away, Shiro pulls his arm back.

Another breath, and this one Keith exhales more audibly. 

Shiro watches Keith’s shoulders pull back and his posture straighten a little. “Just remember—“

“Patience,” Keith murmurs, more to himself, but Shiro can hear it. “Yields focus.”


End file.
